This week’s blog post marks the last in a four-part series – Breaking Barriers (In) Real-Time. Each week in May I will be exploring popular examples of emergent issues in business and popular culture. These issues will be analyzed through my Breaking Barriers system of professional development. I hope that the insights gleaned from these everyday examples will provide accessible, constructive support for you as you navigate similar challenges.
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One of the most common barriers I see in today’s organization is Change Fatigue. Government is not immune either and nowhere is this barrier more prevalent than in the Administration of President Obama. With an onslaught of complex issues, including both domestic and international crises, each day the challenges for the Administration grow and I would argue the capacity to deliver diminishes accordingly.
In essence, change fatigue occurs when an individual or team experiences too many convergent changes over a short period of time. These often tumultuous times can lead to a number of debilitating issues. Three of the most prominent outcomes from change fatigue include: 1) information overload; 2) decrease in quality of work and overall performance; and 3) resistance to future changes that may be necessary. In less elegant terms, change fatigue can be summed up like this: when everything happens at once, nothing works well.
I have no inside view of the inner workings of the White House, however, I see the adverse impacts and the onset of change fatigue occurring as we speak. The messages and promises from the campaign are eroding, priorities seem to be jumbled as goals and initiatives are convoluted and key staffers seem to be making more uncharacteristic mistakes (See the first post in this series for more on this).
If you or your team is in the midst of rapid change, the following tips could help to alleviate the burden and avoid change fatigue:
- Make sure the change is essential. Optional changes should be put on hold in order to avoid adding unnecessary elements to the mix.
- When implementing change, provide your people with full context for why the changes are needed. This will create association with the mandate for change, as well as personal connection with the need for and upside of the expected results.
- Always provide follow-up and on-going support to key team members so that the change effort remains vital, connected and achievable.
Following these three tips will help the team embrace change and keep morale at optimal levels.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Doing Less With Less
This week’s blog post marks the third in a new four-part series – Breaking Barriers (In) Real-Time. Each week in May I will be exploring popular examples of emergent issues in business and popular culture. These issues will be analyzed through my Breaking Barriers system of professional development. I hope that the insights gleaned from these everyday examples will provide accessible, constructive support for you as you navigate similar challenges.
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Lately, the business world is resounding with axiomatic, hyperbolistic statements about the need to do more with less. The disconcerting refrain goes something like this: “We’re laying off half of our workforce, those who remain will just have to do more with less.” Unfortunately, these positive reframes on staff reduction are turning into bragging rights. The other day I heard a manager say that she is now doing the work of three people! Really?
I’ll be the first to say that the downturn is requiring more from everyone, however, in most cases people are simply doing less with less. It is a myth to think that one can flip a switch and double or triple their capacity overnight. While the fat trimming does create more capacity, it is not at the level required by most cutbacks. So what does this mean and what should you do? Let’s use process of elimination to get to a reasonable conclusion:
Should we just multitask more?
No, multitasking is not the answer. Although multitasking has been widely recognized as an important skill in today’s fast paced and competitive business environment, new research indicates that multitasking not only results in the loss of time, but it reduces our overall effectiveness and the accuracy of our work. It turns out that the busyness associated with switching back and forth between tasks reduces the valuable self-talk and mental processing time we actually need to make good decisions. Rather than saving us time and money, multitasking can represent as much as a 40% reduction in our overall productivity. That’s not very efficient.
Should we just work more days and longer hours?
No, working harder is not the answer. While there may be some short-term benefit from this extra time, burn out from this tact would further cripple the productivity of the workforce.
Should we re-focus our priorities on the most essential organizational objectives and then set aside the appropriate level of resources required to meet them?
Yes, in my experience, this is the best anecdote to doing less with less. Let’s face it; everything is not created equal in the workplace. One of the most common mistakes managers and leaders make is to treat all outcomes the same. This is often called whitewashing because everything is made to look the same on the surface.
When we treat all goals and outcomes the same, we inadvertently divert our energy and attention away from the most critical priorities. In a challenging business environment, this distraction from essential priorities can be a fatal flaw. The valiant, but miserable attempts to do “more with less” risks leaving the more difficult challenges left undone. This requires us to be brutally honest about what matters most and to make hard choices about goals that we may not succeed at initially. All of us, especially managers and leaders, must distinguish good successes from okay successes in order to instill “top of mind focus” on the most essential priorities. When we do this, we’ll stop whitewashing and the true colors of our goals and objectives will shine through.
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Lately, the business world is resounding with axiomatic, hyperbolistic statements about the need to do more with less. The disconcerting refrain goes something like this: “We’re laying off half of our workforce, those who remain will just have to do more with less.” Unfortunately, these positive reframes on staff reduction are turning into bragging rights. The other day I heard a manager say that she is now doing the work of three people! Really?
I’ll be the first to say that the downturn is requiring more from everyone, however, in most cases people are simply doing less with less. It is a myth to think that one can flip a switch and double or triple their capacity overnight. While the fat trimming does create more capacity, it is not at the level required by most cutbacks. So what does this mean and what should you do? Let’s use process of elimination to get to a reasonable conclusion:
Should we just multitask more?
No, multitasking is not the answer. Although multitasking has been widely recognized as an important skill in today’s fast paced and competitive business environment, new research indicates that multitasking not only results in the loss of time, but it reduces our overall effectiveness and the accuracy of our work. It turns out that the busyness associated with switching back and forth between tasks reduces the valuable self-talk and mental processing time we actually need to make good decisions. Rather than saving us time and money, multitasking can represent as much as a 40% reduction in our overall productivity. That’s not very efficient.
Should we just work more days and longer hours?
No, working harder is not the answer. While there may be some short-term benefit from this extra time, burn out from this tact would further cripple the productivity of the workforce.
Should we re-focus our priorities on the most essential organizational objectives and then set aside the appropriate level of resources required to meet them?
Yes, in my experience, this is the best anecdote to doing less with less. Let’s face it; everything is not created equal in the workplace. One of the most common mistakes managers and leaders make is to treat all outcomes the same. This is often called whitewashing because everything is made to look the same on the surface.
When we treat all goals and outcomes the same, we inadvertently divert our energy and attention away from the most critical priorities. In a challenging business environment, this distraction from essential priorities can be a fatal flaw. The valiant, but miserable attempts to do “more with less” risks leaving the more difficult challenges left undone. This requires us to be brutally honest about what matters most and to make hard choices about goals that we may not succeed at initially. All of us, especially managers and leaders, must distinguish good successes from okay successes in order to instill “top of mind focus” on the most essential priorities. When we do this, we’ll stop whitewashing and the true colors of our goals and objectives will shine through.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Organizational Success-Handicapping
This week’s blog post marks the second in a new four-part series – Breaking Barriers (In) Real-Time. Each week in May I will be exploring popular examples of emergent issues in business and popular culture. These issues will be analyzed through my Breaking Barriers system of professional development. I hope that the insights gleaned from these everyday examples will provide accessible, constructive support for you as you navigate similar challenges.
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Even if you are not a closet astrophysicist, you have most likely been impacted by the Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, the stunning images of distant stars and galaxies returned by Hubble have shown up in movies, websites and even popular art. A slew of scientific discoveries and affirmations have resulted from the work of this school bus-size instrument. Yesterday the most expensive repair team launched into space to give Hubble “a hug” as one astronaut put it. They are changing out computers, updated hardware and increasing its capacity to deliver even better results. This is the last repair mission and the Hubble will go offline on or around 2014 so that a next generation telescope can get its moment in the sun.
What? One of the most productive instruments NASA has launched will be relegated to the space junk scrap heap while it is still going strong? Okay, major disclaimer here: I am a doctor, but not the kind that is qualified to comment on the science and political inner-game at work here. That being said, in this scenario I see an all-too familiar organizational performance barrier that must be discussed. I call this barrier organizational-success handicapping. I describe this barrier as strategic and operational behavior that creates or attracts obstacles that limit success.
In essence, NASA is abandoning a relatively cheap, productive and reliable first-generation instrument for the promise of something more expensive, hopefully just as productive - and uncertainly reliable – next generation telescope. But why? It is not because the scientific community and the world of amateur star gazers have tired of the breathtaking Hubble pictures. I argue that it is part of a culture that needs such a strong justification for failure (in order to maintain credibility for political and budgetary reasons) that at times they inadvertently induce that failure.
This is similar to the opposite of a sunk-cost fallacy. A sunk-cost fallacy occurs when someone has put so much time, energy and resources into a failing project that they refuse to call it quits – even when they know it will never succeed. On the flip-side, NASA’s barrier of organizational-success handicapping follows a pattern of building road blocks when there are none to be found. This barrier is especially problematic because it creates a nexus of other performance issues and reduces efficiency and capacity for leveraging successes that do occur. For the sake of everyone, let’s hope that there are people working to change the culture so that this form of handicapping does not erode the runaway success of missions like Hubble in the future.
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Even if you are not a closet astrophysicist, you have most likely been impacted by the Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, the stunning images of distant stars and galaxies returned by Hubble have shown up in movies, websites and even popular art. A slew of scientific discoveries and affirmations have resulted from the work of this school bus-size instrument. Yesterday the most expensive repair team launched into space to give Hubble “a hug” as one astronaut put it. They are changing out computers, updated hardware and increasing its capacity to deliver even better results. This is the last repair mission and the Hubble will go offline on or around 2014 so that a next generation telescope can get its moment in the sun.
What? One of the most productive instruments NASA has launched will be relegated to the space junk scrap heap while it is still going strong? Okay, major disclaimer here: I am a doctor, but not the kind that is qualified to comment on the science and political inner-game at work here. That being said, in this scenario I see an all-too familiar organizational performance barrier that must be discussed. I call this barrier organizational-success handicapping. I describe this barrier as strategic and operational behavior that creates or attracts obstacles that limit success.
In essence, NASA is abandoning a relatively cheap, productive and reliable first-generation instrument for the promise of something more expensive, hopefully just as productive - and uncertainly reliable – next generation telescope. But why? It is not because the scientific community and the world of amateur star gazers have tired of the breathtaking Hubble pictures. I argue that it is part of a culture that needs such a strong justification for failure (in order to maintain credibility for political and budgetary reasons) that at times they inadvertently induce that failure.
This is similar to the opposite of a sunk-cost fallacy. A sunk-cost fallacy occurs when someone has put so much time, energy and resources into a failing project that they refuse to call it quits – even when they know it will never succeed. On the flip-side, NASA’s barrier of organizational-success handicapping follows a pattern of building road blocks when there are none to be found. This barrier is especially problematic because it creates a nexus of other performance issues and reduces efficiency and capacity for leveraging successes that do occur. For the sake of everyone, let’s hope that there are people working to change the culture so that this form of handicapping does not erode the runaway success of missions like Hubble in the future.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Inside Blinders
This week’s blog post marks the first in a new four-part series – Breaking Barriers (In) Real-Time. Each week in May I will be exploring popular examples of emergent issues in business and popular culture. These issues will be analyzed through my Breaking Barriers system of professional development. I hope that the insights gleaned from these everyday examples will provide accessible, constructive support for you as you navigate similar challenges.
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Last week Vice President Joe Biden found himself embroiled in another gaffe; this time regarding his supposed personal advice to family members on how to avoid exposure to swine flu. Slightly led into the off-message comments by the interviewer, Vice President Biden seemed to relish the chance to speak for the crisis. While many in the media immediately dismissed the comment as “Joe being Joe,” I recognized a barrier to learning and performance that played a role in his collapse. I refer to this barrier as Inside Blinders and it means that you narrowly see yourself as you want to, not as others do.
As I watched the interview, to me there was a visible instant of choice - the split second in which Mr. Biden made a decision to share the hard truth regarding the crisis in an unabashedly honest way. Perhaps this is too generous for a public figure known for not always thinking before he speaks; but my guess is that his calculation included the assessment that keeping things real with the American public would be better than providing stock answers that don’t actually say anything.
While this kind of candor could really work as a refreshing alternative for the constant media drone of safe political statements, in this case it didn’t. For the 25 second unscripted portion of the interview, The Vice President saw himself as a brave truth teller and did not perceive the public’s view of him as the voice of the administration’s policy on the crisis. The Vice President’s inside blinders made it infeasible for him to measure the cost of his candid comments. As a result, he was not only off the political message and inconsistent with the administration’s health advisory, he appeared naïve and over-reaching about the nature of the threat.
The negative impact of these Inside Blinders does not to suggest that a person should operate exclusively at the whim of others’ perceptions. However, if we can learn to shape our attitudes, behaviors and choices with respect to a balance between how we see ourselves and how other people view us, our calculations can produce better net results. My guess is that this won’t be the last time this happens to the Vice President, so stay tuned for an update…
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Last week Vice President Joe Biden found himself embroiled in another gaffe; this time regarding his supposed personal advice to family members on how to avoid exposure to swine flu. Slightly led into the off-message comments by the interviewer, Vice President Biden seemed to relish the chance to speak for the crisis. While many in the media immediately dismissed the comment as “Joe being Joe,” I recognized a barrier to learning and performance that played a role in his collapse. I refer to this barrier as Inside Blinders and it means that you narrowly see yourself as you want to, not as others do.
As I watched the interview, to me there was a visible instant of choice - the split second in which Mr. Biden made a decision to share the hard truth regarding the crisis in an unabashedly honest way. Perhaps this is too generous for a public figure known for not always thinking before he speaks; but my guess is that his calculation included the assessment that keeping things real with the American public would be better than providing stock answers that don’t actually say anything.
While this kind of candor could really work as a refreshing alternative for the constant media drone of safe political statements, in this case it didn’t. For the 25 second unscripted portion of the interview, The Vice President saw himself as a brave truth teller and did not perceive the public’s view of him as the voice of the administration’s policy on the crisis. The Vice President’s inside blinders made it infeasible for him to measure the cost of his candid comments. As a result, he was not only off the political message and inconsistent with the administration’s health advisory, he appeared naïve and over-reaching about the nature of the threat.
The negative impact of these Inside Blinders does not to suggest that a person should operate exclusively at the whim of others’ perceptions. However, if we can learn to shape our attitudes, behaviors and choices with respect to a balance between how we see ourselves and how other people view us, our calculations can produce better net results. My guess is that this won’t be the last time this happens to the Vice President, so stay tuned for an update…
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